Thanks for the responses. I don't want to rebuild the old Premier with the bad action brackets -- just was wondering if there was another action bracket available I could use so I could replace them, and regulate it close enough to be playable for the owner, an elderly woman who just plays casually now and then and isn't going to buy another piano at this stage in her life. The rest of the piano is "OK" -- soundboard, sustain, and tone are good for an old, small grand -- it never got that much use, but as it is, it's just taking up room and is un-sellable with the action un-regulatable because of the cracked and swollen (?) action brackets. ---------------- Newton, I was soaking the wafers for 30 seconds, 'cause on the directions it says to dip them for a half a minute, but now maybe I'll try a shorter dip. Thanks. ---------------- Whatever happened to Susan Graham? I thought she was an excellent technician and gave a great seminar on grand action reconditioning & regulating 10 years or so ago. Also wrote good, useful articles in the Journal. ----------------- I'm under the impression that steaming hammers is supposed to loosen them up, let them "bloom out" a little, and unpack the dense felt. However, after getting wet, wool, upon drying, shrinks. Does the drying cause a reversal of the effect of steaming? Or can the wool simply not shrink and compact back to the hard, packed condition it was in (at least under the strike point) before steaming? I have steamed a couple sets of hammers and it did soften the tone quite a bit -- maybe too much -- it's hard to know how far to go -- but after a few months, the tone had brightened up again considerably, but not (yet) to its former bangy, strident character (this was on a 6-foot Kawai). -------------- I feel that Yamaha hammers are "weird" and don't behave like most others. As the strike point wears, they seem to pull apart at the crown and "cauliflower", if you will. Then when you file and reshape them, they pull apart even more, sort of re-creating the flat spot on top you were trying to get rid of. Needle voicing aggravates the situation, since it breaks up the felt and makes it spread out even more at the crown. Yet the felt in the treble and high treble is so dense you can't get a needle into it. It's very frustrating and some owners are disappointed at the relatively short time it takes for the hammers to get flat on top, even if no filing or voicing has been done since it left the factory. Kawai is similar if I remember right, but I haven't done as many, or at least none recently. Is there some special way of filing/voicing these hammers? Thanks to all for comments, help. Dave Nereson, RPT, Denver dnereson@dim.com
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